Abbott promoted to Healthy Oxford Hills substance abuse prevention role

NORWAY — Jessica Abbott has recently been promoted into a full-time role as health promotion coordinator-substance use prevention of Healthy Oxford Hills, a project of Stephens Memorial Hospital.

Jim Douglas, director of Healthy Oxford Hills, said in a news release, “Jessica has been a strong member of the HOH team since she started with us in 2015 as our office manager…Despite being new to population health and prevention work, she set her sights on becoming certified in Maine as a prevention specialist with an emphasis on substance use prevention, and has worked steadily toward that goal. I have no doubt that she will be a great asset to the Oxford County community in her new role.”
Abbott’s role as office manager included working on tobacco initiatives with the substance use prevention coordinator. She became a TiPS certified trainer so that she could help businesses that sell alcohol create environments that promote safety and responsibility by training employees on safe serving skills. She also worked closely with the Western Maine Addiction Recovery Initiative. She began helping the committee and became interested in what the group was doing around substance use, including addressing the recent epidemic of opiate overdoses. Working with county and local law enforcement, the group launched Project Save ME, a community program to help those struggling with substance use.
She became a trained recovery coach and the contact person for Project Save ME, in charge of taking referrals and then contacting other recovery coaches who were on-call. Abbott earned prevention specialist certification on June 22.
“I hope to be a great asset to Healthy Oxford Hills and the communities that we serve,” she said in the news release.